Warren Buffett on the Financial Crisis

by Cameron Schaefer on January 27, 2009

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Last week Susie Gharib of PBS interviewed Warren Buffett, the following was an answer of his I found interesting. Not necessarily because I agree that the government should intervene, but more because it shows a candor and the admission that we don’t know what’s going to happen when we start tweaking a free, or semi-free market. Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.

SG: But there is debate about whether there should be fiscal stimulus, whether tax cuts work or not. There is all of this academic debate among economists. What do you think? Is that the right way to go with stimulus and tax cuts?

WB: The answer is nobody knows. The economists don’t know. All you know is you throw everything at it and whether it’s more effective if you’re fighting a fire to be concentrating the water flow on this part or that part. You’re going to use every weapon you have in fighting it. And people, they do not know exactly what the effects are. Economists like to talk about it, but in the end they’ve been very, very wrong and most of them in recent years on this. We don’t know the perfect answers on it. What we do know is to stand by and do nothing is a terrible mistake or to follow Hoover-like policies would be a mistake and we don’t know how effective in the short run we don’t know how effective this will be and how quickly things will right themselves. We do know over time the American machine works wonderfully and it will work wonderfully again.

I think the key today is to bounce back harder each time you get knocked down, which means follow your passions, pick your battles, and surround yourself with people that lift you up and catalyze you. Don’t knock yourself down or hang with drains.